Backwards
by writingwillow
Summary: There are plenty of stories of people falling into the worlds of an anime or manga, but what if it happened the other way around, and the characters fell into our world? Rated for language and later chapters. Up for adoption.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon.**

It's been a few years since the last battle to save the worlds, and Tai and the other digidestined are mostly in college now. Of course everyone still got together every once in a while, usually in the digital world, just to spend time together. Today though was special, because it was the beginning of a short holiday, and the college kids were coming home for a while.

The sun shined hot on the digidestined as they cleaned up what was left of the picnic Kari and Yolie had packed for them. Joking and laughing both the digidestined and their digimon practically skipped to the portal that would take them to Izzy's old house, where his parents were expecting them.

On the other side of the digital gate though, it was far from the beating sun that reflected the high spirits of the reunited digidestined. The wind blew sheets of rain sideways as thunder roared in the background, and lightning lit the buildings to which power had already failed. Izzy's parents waited nervously, hoping that the kids would arrive safely before the power was lost in their building as well.

His mother was in the kitchen, washing their dishes from lunch, and glanced nervously at her husband at the sound of thunder. It sounded so close it was hard for her not to panic; especially knowing the kids' arrival was almost completely dependant on the computer that was still in Izzy's old bedroom. She almost jumped out of her skin when a bolt of lightning struck particularly close, sending a power surge that could be seen in the lamps as they brightened considerably for less than a second before cutting off completely. The two looked at each other with worry evident in their gaze, neither of them knowing what would happen to the kids now, or where they might go with Izzy's computer inaccessible.

Unfortunately for the digidestined, the lightning strike had come moments after they had held up their digivices, and begun to fall through the familiar digital gate. Suspended as if in space they felt an unfamiliar jolt that they met with a sense of dread throughout the group before what could only be described as feeling like they were on a roller coaster without any safety harnesses before crashing unceremoniously into the lap of an old woman none of them had ever seen before.

They stood up shakily, and more than a bit queasy, as they tried to apologize and figure out where they were. The old woman was panicked, and for a moment looked as though she might have a heart attack at the shock of them falling out on her. There was a sort of unified sense of apprehension when they noticed that, not only had they landed in the middle of a public library, but they seemed to have already gained the attention of almost everyone there.

Sitting a couple rows behind the old woman (who would never go near a computer again) a wiry looking girl with long bright blue and green hair watched them in open astonishment. They looked dazed and confused, so when she saw a few of the librarians, with the library's director walking over she quickly closed out of what she had been doing and cancelled the rest of her time on the public computer.

Before the librarians could get close to them she darted over and, grabbing Sora's arm, she whispered in her ear;

"I'll take care of the librarians, just play along." Sora was confused but agreed, turning to help the others up, each of them picking up their respective digimon, well any of them that could.

The other girl quickly stepped over to the librarians and tried to explain that it had simply been an accident, doing her best to make up a story as she went along. They calmed down when she promised to pay any damages, and that she and her friends would leave the library for the day. Still apologizing profusely, she turned as soon as they were far enough away.

In obvious embarrassment the digidestined left the library as quickly as they could, with their new friend.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon or whatever company Volkswagen is from.**

The digidestined quickly left the library and, still confused, got into their new friend's Volkswagen without a thought so she could take them back to her apartment. It was eventually Izzy who was the first to speak.

"Why are you helping us? Who are you?" He asked, unable at the moment to say it more diplomatically.

"I'm helping you because you needed it. I'm assuming you didn't intend to come out of a public computer in an old woman's lap, and I'm also assuming that there weren't too many other people that you could have appeared in front of like that who would be quite as calm about this whole situation. I wouldn't have guessed I would be. As far as who I am," she said glancing back at him for less than a second, "My name is Samantha."

She assumed it was shock and confusion, but no one said another word until she parked outside of her building.

"You can stay with me while you're here." She said nervously. She waited for a few moments, but the silence was making her more nervous than she already was, she got out of the car. She had to wait a minute or so, but they followed her to her apartment.

"Where are we exactly?" Kari asked while they waited for the elevator to stop. Samantha looked at her from where she stood, gripping the handrail on the side of the elevator.

"That's not actually that easy to explain." She answered thoughtfully, wincing when the elevator came to a stop. She stepped out of the elevator shakily, and led them to her apartment a few feet away. "Technically we're in San Francisco. But there's another problem."

"What do you mean another problem?" Izzy asked, a bit confused. She smiled at them, still nervous.

"Come inside and I'll show you." She said, unlocking the door and letting them in. They hesitated, but went inside.

As soon as everyone was inside she went into another room, leaving them alone for a minute. While any of them that had felt sick after their unexpected rollercoaster ride through the digital gate were okay now, they were still nervous and confused about what had happened, what was still going on. Finding themselves in America was a problem, but with travel in the digital world, not really that troublesome, but none of them recognized Samantha as a digidestined, and the way she said there was another problem made them nervous.

She came back a moment later with a small book, handing it to Matt, who happened to be the closest. What startled him was that he recognized the kids on the cover, one of them was his little brother. Dumbstruck, he let Tai take the book from him, it wasn't long before everyone had seen the book, and Gatomon was looking through it.

"So what exactly does this mean?" Izzy asked, wanting to reject the explanation he could think of.

"You're not exactly in, either of your worlds anymore." She said, as nervous as she was, she knew it couldn't be anything to the confusion and anxiousness that they had to be feeling. At least they seemed to be trying to think through it.

After a few minutes waiting for them to finish looking at the book she invited them into her living room where they could sit down. A few of them followed with empty looks in their eyes.

"How do we know we're not in the real world?" Davis asked, confused. It was Gatomon that answered.

"Have you ever seen yourself in a comic book before in the real world?" she asked pointedly. He grimaced at the easy answer.

"But how did we get here?" Cody asked more to the point.

No one seemed to have an answer, so they turned to Izzy, but it was Samantha who answered.

"Considering what your usual method of travel between your human world and the digital world is there's probably no end to the possible explanations for something going wrong, and no real way to prove any of them, especially when you're no longer in either of them." She said as if she were just talking to herself, pulling her legs up to sit Indian style on her oversized couch.

"So what are we supposed to do? How will we get back?" Kari asked nervously. Samantha tried to smile at her from where she was.

"At this point all we can do is focus on how to connect with the digital world. Short of creating a black hole, or trying to manufacture a wormhole you're not going to be able to go straight back to your human world." She said.

"Considering that we get to the digital world by using the digital gate in the internet in our world, the same may be possible in this world." Izzy added. She nodded to him.

"It may take more to connect to the digital gate from this world though." She said. "There are no real digimon here, so it probably won't be as easy as just logging on here. What happened before you got here, what do you remember?" she asked trying to think.

"We were just leaving the digital world, we were going through the digital gate when something went wrong, and instead of Izzy's house we came out here." Joe answered almost calmly. She smiled at him.

"Then the problem is probably something that happened between the time you entered the digital gate and the time you fell out of the library computer." She theorized.

"I'm lost" Tai said, his eyebrows knitting in confusion. "What could have happened in the couple seconds it takes to go through the digital gate that would send us here that's different from the other thousand times we've gone through?" he asked.

"Like she said before, it's anyone's guess how we got here, something could have happened to either side of the digital gate, or to the gate itself that altered our course through it." Izzy answered nervously.

"As it is, there's no point in worrying about it too much." Samantha said nervously. "We'll figure out how to get you back as soon as we can but, in the meantime you can stay here with me." She offered.

"It's not like we have much choice." TK said standing up. Samantha grimaced at the way he said it. "We probably can't do much if there's a cartoon about us." he explained noticing her reaction.

"Actually you could probably move around without too much trouble. Even as the main characters of a fairly popular manga most people probably wouldn't make the connection seeing you in real life, even if they're familiar with the story." She said nervously. She kept expecting what she said to upset them in some way. She assumed it was due to them spending so much time going in and out of the digital world, and other worlds, that they seemed to accept what was going on. Still, she would have expected a bigger reaction to her referring to them as a manga.

"Fairly popular?" Tai asked skeptically. Samantha looked at him.

"Considering how many manga there are, and the Digimon series was overshadowed by Pokemon, which had a similar theme. The series is also a few years old, and the seasons following yours generally didn't help the popularity of the series itself." She said, analyzing what she knew of the series as a whole. The digidestined looked at her strangely.

Worn out after everything that had happened, they eventually agreed to stay in the overlarge apartment with Samantha. There was definitely plenty of room. The living room alone was big enough for a small circus.

"Since we're staying do you mind giving us a tour?" Yolie asked grinning. Ken looked at her disapprovingly.

"Sure!" she said happily. Standing up she clasped her hands in front of her nervously. She led them through the house a bit awkwardly. The Kitchen/dinning room was fully stocked. The house had four bedrooms, two of them doubling as office type areas with fold out beds. The master bedroom had its own master bath. She told them they could have this one, hers was one of the office/bedrooms. The apartment also had two bathrooms open to the hallways.

It wasn't long before the sun was going down outside the building, the large windows and open balcony bathing the apartment in a dark orange light. Anxious and confused about what happened, it wasn't long before everyone had decided who was sleeping where and everyone was going to bed.

Samantha kept her room, given she still had most of her things for school and everything in the desk there, and she wasn't on a vacation. Between Matt, Ken, Joe and Cody, the girls were convinced to take the master bedroom with the master bath. That way the girls would have plenty of privacy. The boys then divided between the two guest rooms. They were all large enough that it didn't really bother anyone. Matt, TK, Ken and Cody took the regular guest room, leaving Tai, Davis, Izzy and Joe in the second office/guestroom. The digimon went automatically with their partner.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own digimon.**

The next morning Samantha woke up at four to get ready for her classes. She did her best to be quiet as she took her shower and got dressed, only to find Cody and Gabumon in the living room. She smiled at them apologetically.

"Sorry, I'm not used to having guests." She said nervously. Cody greeted her with a small nod.

"No problem." Gabumon answered smiling at her. For a minute or so she just stood nervously in the hallway, not sure what she should do until she glanced at the clock and noticed the time.

"Shit!" she cursed, still trying to keep her voice down. Cody's eyes widened in shock, she hadn't cursed at all the day before. Behind her Davis' eyebrows raised at the outburst.

"You aren't supposed to use that kind language around small children." He smirked. She turned to him with a blank expression.

"You consider yourselves small children?" she asked without thinking. Before he could come up with a reply she glanced back at the clock and grabbed her bag. At the door she glanced back at them.

"I have to go to my classes. There's food in the kitchen, the tvs and everything should work. I'll leave the van here in case you need to go anywhere." She couldn't think of anything else she should tell them. "I should be back by this afternoon."

With that she left. Davis just grinned and walked over to the couch, Demiveemon following him tiredly.

Running to the college campus Samantha almost immediately forgot about her unanticipated house guests. She nearly had to run to every one of her classes to get there in time. She was majoring in art history, hoping to get a job in a studio or a museum somewhere.

Back at her apartment the rest of the digidestined were beginning to wake up. Davis was already camped out in front of her television. It hadn't been long once he found where she kept her movies to find her collection of anime's, including sets of digimon series, including series movies. As soon as he had seen the sets he put in the first one. As the other digidestined woke up they went in and watched in a kind of morbid curiosity as their digital adventures played out on the television in front of them. They couldn't help but find it incredibly weird to watch cartoon versions of themselves on the screen. At the same time it was fun to reminisce as scenes from their past played before them, more than they would have thought that had faded back into their memories, almost forgotten.

Samantha didn't have many friends but the ones she had she was close to. So when she stopped one of them to ask about canceling their 'band rehearsal' for that week, they knew something weird was going on. It wasn't like it was a real band, they were just friends that all happened to play instruments and sing, it was just their excuse to get together at least once every week. And since they all loved music it was fun to just play their favorite songs, songs from their favorite artists. Still, Samantha had never put off 'rehearsal' since the 'band' was formed, while they had still been living in the dorms. Granted a couple of them still did live in the dorms, the ones that had been lucky enough to be able to befriend their roommates.

She assured them that everything was fine, something just came up that she had to take care first. Really she wouldn't have canceled if she'd remembered to mention it to the digidestined before she left, but as it was she needed to go back to her apartment and see of they could think of anything to try to send them home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon.**

By the time Samantha got back to her apartment the digidestined had already finished watching most of the series. When she opened the door they were all sitting in her living room talking awkwardly.

"You know you're allowed to leave the apartment right?" Walking in she saw that the last episode was just ending. They were watching what was supposed to be their future selves on the screen with children they didn't have as 'Davis' narrated. Matt, Sora, Ken and Yolie, each couple already sitting together, had dark blushes spread over their faces. Though, Matt and Sora didn't look quite as surprised at their ending as Ken and Yolie.

"This is how things are supposed to turn out?" Cody asked looking, somehow surprised and calm at the same time. Samantha wasn't sure how to respond.

"Um, I'm not sure." She said uncertainly. She walked over to the couch and looked at the screen. "Honestly I'm not very good at this sort of thing. Veronica knows more about this stuff I would think…" She trailed off, more talking to herself at this point than she was to them.

"Veronica?" Yolie asked, breaking into her line of thought. Samantha looked back at them, slightly surprised.

"Ah… Yeah, she's one of the girls in the band." Samantha told them dismissively. As soon as she'd said it Matt looked at her appraisingly. Sora looked back and forth between them, but Samantha didn't seem to notice.

"You have a band?" Davis asked pointedly. Samantha blinked at them for a moment, thinking back through what she's told them.

"Sort of," she answered, pulling out the chair that was in front of the computer to sit down. "Some of my friends and I play instruments and get together to rehearse sometimes, but we aren't trying to be musicians anyway… most of us anyway." She amended.

"Do you think she would help?" Izzy asked, bringing them back to the subject of finding their way home.

"As far as the quantum physics stuff, yeah." She paused, thinking about how she could tell Veronica that she had a bunch of cartoon characters staying in her apartment and they want her help to find out how they can get home. "I'll see if I can talk to her when I go to practice."

"When do you have practice?" Matt asked curiously, he hadn't expected the girl to be a musician, and apparently he wasn't going to be one.

"We were supposed to have practice today, but it was cancelled, all of us are a little busy right now, but we usually get together every week." She answered blankly. "At any rate, she would probably tell you not to worry about the future too much, people don't know their futures for a reason. From what I do understand about that kind of thing, knowing the future is what gives people the opportunity to change it, and in the same way, people most often meet their destiny on the path they take to avoid it."

"So is this our future or not?" Davis asked, annoyed and out of his depth.

"Now that you've seen it, probably not." She told him. "Still, I think I probably should ask Veronica for her help trying to get you all home, I would send her an email, but she's worse with computers than I am, which is really pathetic." She was muttering to herself again, so no one bothered to comment.

Not long afterwards, Samantha retreated to her bedroom to do homework and they didn't see her again until it was getting dark. She only came out then to check the kitchen and decide that they should all go out for dinner, she didn't have enough to make anything for a group this big. She also decided that they would stop on the way home to pick up something for the next morning, and she would go grocery shopping on her way home from school that day.


End file.
